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NHL lockout: No telling how NHL players will react to offer: Cox

An agreement could be in the offing, or an even uglier war could start.

Donald Fehr, executive director of the NHLPA, remains something of a mystery to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the owners. Will he try to work off the league's latest proposal and get a deal done, or will he decide to play hardball? (Chris Young / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

First, the NHL Players’ Association boss could work off the NHL’s proposal from Tuesday, understanding that the players could be painting themselves into a dangerous corner if they appear anything less than co-operative and interested in getting the season started, and start grinding away on the fine print and contractual language leading to an agreement by late next week.

Or, second, he could see the NHL offer as a sign of weakness, as an indication Gary Bettman is feeling the heat of both hockey fans and his owners.

And he might tell his membership that if they’re willing to play hardball and extend this labour battle, a big victory could be at hand.

Which way Fehr goes, nobody knows. Even the NHL is unsure. They felt they had a read on former union boss Bob Goodenow, and during Paul Kelly’s brief tenure before he was deposed as executive director, believed he was a person they could work with.

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Fehr? Still a mystery to Bettman and his staff. They know his colourful and controversial history in baseball and willingness to go to the mattresses, but they aren’t quite sure what he is now, whether he’s the same radical hardliner or a new style of pragmatic deal-maker.

We’re about to find out.

Nobody believes the union will simply accept the NHL’s offer, one that marked a substantial move towards the players from its previous proposal. The best-case scenario for a hockey fan hoping that the season begins Nov. 2, as per the NHL’s proposed timetable, is that it forms the basic structure of a deal, with the details still to be hammered out.

Chicago player rep Steve Montador suggested it was a “starting point,” but said the players also learned that the way in which the league’s revenues would be defined have changed.

“Will the players accept it? I don’t think so. 50-50 can mean a lot of things,” said Montador.

The 50-50 split in revenue was the big headliner out of the NHL’s offer, but for hockey fans, how they split the money doesn’t really matter, at least not in a direct way.

Of more interest to the everyday fan would be other clauses included in the NHL’s proposal that might affect their favourite team or the players that any team might be able to put on the ice. There were a number of things that would directly impact the personnel teams could put together, such as:

• The proposed salary cap under the NHL offer would go down to about $60 million, with a floor of about $44 million. Right now, it’s estimated that 16 teams are already above that cap, so clubs could be forced to do some serious shuffling if the season were to start in a couple of weeks.

If the new deal, as proposed, no longer allows teams to bury expensive one-way contracts in the minors but would have to count them on their salary cap, some teams could be in a tight spot.

• The CBA proposal from the owners would effectively put an end to the controversial long-term, back-diving contracts such as those secured by Brad Richards and Zach Parise in recent years.

No deal could be longer than five years, and no year’s salary could deviate by more than 10 per cent. So 10-year deals with one year at $10 million and one year at $1 million would be verboten, and contracts could no longer be front-loaded.

Richards might still choose New York, and Parise might still choose Minnesota, but it wouldn’t be because those teams were willing to structure contracts in a way few teams would.

• The owners’ proposal includes a clause that would allow teams to trade cap space — for players, not picks — and retain salary in trades.

Each would have a limit of $3 million. So a money-crunched club could trade up to $3 million of cap space to add to their rosters. The Leafs, in theory, could trade Phil Kessel to L.A. or Florida, and as part of the deal pay up to $3 million of his salary.

That’s a big systemic change, one that could really make things interesting at the trade deadline.

But those changes only matter if the game gets out of the boardroom and back on the ice.

Sure, there was optimism on Tuesday. But that could be dashed by Thursday when the two sides meet again.

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